His head sank back again upon his crossed arms.  “It’s not a bad story,” he murmured.

But the captain shook his head; his loyalty to his employer was still uppermost.  “It doesn’t seem right!” he protested.  “It’s a sort of a liberty, isn’t it, signing another man’s name to it, it’s a sort of forgery.”

Channing made no answer.  His eyes were shut and he was shivering violently, hugging himself in his arms.

A quarter of an hour later, when the captain returned with fresh quinine, Channing sat upright and saluted him.

“Your information, sir,” he said, addressing the open door politely, “is of the greatest value.  Tell the executive officer to proceed under full steam to Panama.  He will first fire a shot across her bows, and then sink her!” He sprang upright and stood for a moment, sustained by the false strength of the fever.  “To Panama, you hear me!” he shouted.  He beat the floor with his foot.  “Faster, faster, faster,” he cried.  “We’ve got a great story!  We want a clear wire, we want the wire clear from Panama to City Hall.  It’s the greatest story ever written—­full of facts, facts, facts, facts for the Consolidated Press—­and Keating wrote it.  I tell you, Keating wrote it.  I saw him write it.  I was a stoker on the same ship.”

The mate and crew came running forward and stood gaping stupidly through the doors and windows of the chart-room.  Channing welcomed them joyously, and then crumpled up in a heap and pitched forward into the arms of the captain.  His head swung weakly from shoulder to shoulder.

“I beg your pardon,” he muttered, “I beg your pardon, captain, but your engine-room is too hot.  I’m only a stoker and I know my place, sir, but I tell you, your engine-room is too hot.  It’s a burning hell, sir, it’s a hell!”

The captain nodded to the crew and they closed in on him, and bore him, struggling feebly, to a bunk in the cabin below.  In the berth opposite, Keating was snoring peacefully.

After the six weeks’ siege the Fruit Company’s doctor told Channing he was cured, and that he might walk abroad.  In this first walk he found that, during his illness, Port Antonio had reverted to her original condition of complete isolation from the world, the press-boats had left her wharves, the correspondents had departed from the veranda of her only hotel, the war was over, and the Peace Commissioners had sailed for Paris.  Channing expressed his great gratitude to the people of the hotel and to the Fruit Company’s doctor.  He made it clear to them that if they ever hoped to be paid those lesser debts than that of gratitude which he still owed them, they must return him to New York and Newspaper Row.  It was either that, he said, or, if they preferred, he would remain and work out his indebtedness, checking bunches of bananas at twenty dollars a month.  The Fruit Company decided it would be paid more quickly if Channing worked at his own trade, and accordingly sent him North in one of its steamers.  She landed him in Boston, and he borrowed five dollars from the chief engineer to pay his way to New York.